Home safe and sound!

We are home after a great trip. We really enjoyed spending time with all of our friends and family. but now back to work to get some rest! I have really missed australia, and i didn't realize how much untill i was back there! But we still ahve a while in Japan, we need to get visa stuff sorted out for me first and then who knows?

We had some fun on the way home. This year is Visit Malaysia year! it's 50 years for them as a united country so they have all kinda things happening! So in the airport they had a display of some traditional dancing and folk music and costumes. We were watching them dance and then as a grand finale they all went and pulled up a person to dance with them, and they took Evan! so here are pictures of Evan getting down Malaysian style!

Family Vacation!

This is us and Andi's family! We have stayed with them a week and will be seeing Leanne and Pam off tomoro at the airport, they are going to Taiwan with a team from their church to run two kids camps. Then they'll be back for a week and the whole family will head to the States, Mom, Dad and Leanne to Chicago and Pam will be of to College in upstate New York. So the family is really spreading out.

We've had a great time together and revived lots of old and silly family traditions, and it's been great, but it's exciting that everyone is off to exciting things!

More on Evan's family to come!

More Strange Japanese Food

One of the things that Evan wanted to try while we were in Japan was Basashi. Raw horse. So a few weeks ago when we went to Matsumoto to see a funky black castle, were in a region who's specialty was Basashi, so we made the most of it and gave it a go. It was pretty expensive. About 10 dollars for the plate you can see in the picture.

Evan really liked it. It didn't taste much different from steak tartare, which is pretty much the same thing. I thought it was ok, but i'm too cheap, for half the price I had a massive plate of Tempura and Soba! so i guess we are trying some Japanese food that we are really enjoying, and finding some that we really don't care for.

Next on the list is going to be sea urchin I think (for Evan, not for me, obviously).

Cos Play

Ok, so i was thinking about other things that should be on the blog. And i remembered our trip to Tokyo in January.

One the things i really wanted to see in Japan was Cos Play. It's when the Japanese young people dress up in really weird outfits and hang around in a part of Tokyo called Harajuku. It's always an entertaining place to people watch.

I guess the reason they do it is to escape the 'normal' style of their lives. They wear uniforms all their lives, in school and then when they start working, suits, suits, suits! so to dress up like a gothic Bo Peep, or Victorian governess is a bit of escape and rebellion. It's a good idea and it doesn't hurt anyone, it's just dress up! That's my theory anyway.

So here's to the brave and the bizzare!

Gambatte Harajuku girls!

New Japanese Food!

So I went to the vending machine on Sunday to get a drink and i found THIS!! it's grape flavored Jelly (Jello) in a can! It's solid when you buy it and then you shake the can to loosen it up, and then you can pretty much drink it! It tasted really good! Who would've thought, jelly in a can! It's one of the greatest ideas ever!

Festival! Is that Legal?!

Ok, So life in the summer in Japan is never boring.

My Branch is in an undercover shoping arcade in, kind of the centre of the city. This past weekend there was a festival! Work got pretty exciting.

This area used to be really Agricultural, it still is now, but mostly as an extra, not as primary income. So the story of this festival is that farmers got a month off, so they had a festival to celebrate during their month off.

So what happened was, the street my branch is on got really busy! But work got really really slow, because everyone wanted to party, not study i guess. So there were street vendors in the next street over, and they blocked off a 6 lane road for a block and there was all kinds of stuff, carnival shooting games and food and the Toyama professional Basketball team was there and the kids could challenge them to 2 on 2 games, and the Hokuriku soccer team was there (they are 2 leagues down from the J-League, which is the top league, but they were there, so that was pretty cool).

One of the main features of this festival is that groups of people carry around portable shrines. I'm not sure why. And they ususally wear special team out fits to do it. Well one of the teams was a Big SURPRISE! They had on big tall boots, and what looked like G-strings! The Japanese TRULY have a different attitude towards nudity! So they have like 20 guys in G-strings, marching back and forth and all around the streets, carrying these portable shirnes and shouting a marching word. I can't remember what it is bus it seems to be basically the equivilent of a one-work Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi.

So life stays exciting and we had a great chance for some really lazy festival attendance.

Now we are getting ready for our visit! getting excited about seeing everyone and being literate again!

See you soon!

Tokyo! (again)

Last weekend we had to take a trip into Tokyo to file some forms for Andi's Australian visa, and we took the chance to see some of the stuff around town.

We took a night bus, which left Toyama at 11 pm and arrived in Tokyo at 5 am. So we got a bit of rest on the bus and then decided to hit the town!

First stop was the Tsujiki Fish market. Guess what! it was closed. It was fine for us because we were already up, but if we had woken up at 5 to get the market and THEN find out it was closed, well we would've been mad. I wasn't all that disappointed to be honest, after almost a year, i still really don't like sushi, and the idea of sushi for breakfast.... bleagh!

Next Evan humored me, and we went to see Ginza. It's like the Park Avenue of Tokyo. It was one of the first places to "westernize" during the Meiji Period (mid-late 1800s, Eureka stockade kinda time). Now it's mostly designer shops, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Pucci (that was a new one on me) and Tiffanys. Tiffanys was beautiful, but as for the others, well it may say "Gucci" and cost an arm and a leg, but it still looks like you made a bomber jacket out of tin foil! Japanese fashion tends to run towards the more gaudy.

In the afternoon we went to see the National Science Museum, which according to the guide book, was a waste of time, but according to Andi and Evan was an afternoon well spent. There was alot of natural history stuff and they had a little PDA with a commentary that you could rent, so i walked around listening to that. Most to the exhibits were about animals and the environment and stuff that Evan already knew so i just listened. The top floor had a bunch of hands on science experiments and stuff, it was fun to watch Evan and the little Japanese kids play!

The next day we did paperwork, and that turned out all right. We are just waiting now for the next step.

We hit Akihabara, the electronics market for the afternoon. I was a good girl, and didn't complain, so i got KFC for lunch and a present! I (well we really) got a translator that does 24 languages. Need any help with handy phrases in Tagalog or Hungarian, I'm your girl!

We took the Shinkansen home, and got back safe and sound, but tired. It was really great to escape work for a while and have some time to remember why we are here and why we love Japan!

More of the 1/2 naked festival to come, stay tuned!


Andi

Exciting Monday

Hi all!

Okay, it's been a long time since we've posted so the big things are that we have moved from Takaoka to Toyama. It's about 20 kms away and it's a bigger city. There is a small mountain range between them so dispite being so close they function really seperately. We also got promotions, so we are like the head teachers at our own schools.

Our days off are Sunday and Monday now, and this past monday we went and did some sight seeing with our Japanese freind, Yuuya.

There is a small town called Tonami, which is famous for a tulip festival, which finished sunday, but was free on monday becuase it was officially over! so we went and saw some beautiful flowers! and took lots of pictures.

Then we went to a UNESCO World Heritage listed area called Gokayama, where there are villages of large thatched roof houses that have been in the area since the 12th Century. Probably not these exact houses becuase different parts are replaced as part of regular maintainance, but the area is protected. They are also still people's houses, the residents acctually still live and work their. They have little rice fields, but I'm pretty sure they have other jobs.

The Gokayama area is known for Washi paper, made for the bark of a mulberry tree. The area has providing paper for important families and people since the time of the Taira clan (1160s i think).

So after we finished at the village we went to a place where we could make some Washi paper ourselves! It was really cool!

We are heading to Takayama next week!

More soon!